Three new friends: Opal, Gladys and Elliott. You can see the photos and read their stories on our Flickr page, and you can check them out on our Etsy shop.

Our new little friend Pico came to us from just south of the border. He made his way North after he was downsized from the entourage of the feared, mythic creature- El Chupacabra.

It seems that with all of the stress and strain on the global economy of late, people are not spending quite as much time in leisure activities and pursuits. This decline means that it’s become fairly lean, income wise, for creatures like El Chupacabra, Bigfoot, The Strawman and UFOs as more and more people are focused on dollar retention. And sadly, less vacations translates to less sightings-translates to less income-translates to Pico being on the streets.

So, what is a 6″ out of work monster to do? Well apparently, Pico caught one of our TV ads at 2:00am advertising our placement services and decided to see if we could help. After hiring a coyote to get him across the border, riding several box-car trains and hitchhiking his way through the West Coast, he ended up on our door step looking fairly disheveled.

It has been a couple weeks now, and we are happy to say he has his wonderful orange glow back. He has started working on his memoirs, “Mi Chupacabra es su Chupacabra”, and is looking for a safe, quite environment to add the last chapters to his seminal work.

It arrived today. Wrapped in plastic. The one, the only Computer Arts Projects-all the way from jolly old England. Not just any issue, but THE Character and Toy Design Issue. The issue that features none other than….DOLLS FOR FRIENDS!!!

I am telling the truth, by the way. Some of our little guys were featured in the November issue of CAP! And it’s such a pretty magazine too. Glossy pages, fancy colors, and really cool artists-people much cooler than us! We are truly honored and blown away to have been a part of this awesome publication. It’s funny because we really stress if our sales are down, second guess our work, and are always critical of everything we make. Not that this changes anything, but it’s really nice to think that somebody likes us!

We truly love what we’re doing, you never know how things are going to turn out, and we have plenty of plush orphans lying around to prove it! But in the end if you get to make something that makes you happy, and makes someone else happy too-it doesn’t get any better.

A huge thank you to everyone that continues to support and befriend us! Especially Kate Evans at CAP for including us in such an awesome publication!

Cheers!

Erin’s take on the CAP interview can be seen on his website, webclique.net.

We were to thrilled to receive our half of a trade we recently initiated with Dawn Ramerman of Look What I Can Do. Jill contacted her on the off chance that she might be willing to share one of her wonderful creations with us in exchange for one of our pieces. Thankfully, she was up for the trade. Patty the owl came to us a few days ago in the mail, and we just love her. The craftsmanship (craftswomanship) of the piece is top notch and her choice of fabric was wonderful.

The art of the trade is something that is essential to the DIY/craft experience. There is so much wonderful and talented work out there that if two artists are in mutual admiration of each other’s work, it’s wonderful when a trade can be arranged between the two to foster that mutual appreciation.

If you are interested in seeing the piece we sent Dawn, you can check out her post on the Hanetori we sent her and all about here work on her weblog. Better yet, after you’re done with that check out her Etsy store to see what she has available for sale. Her pieces would surely be a welcome addition to any home.

Thanks again Dawn!

Here are a few of the pieces we’ve put together for the upcoming 2nd Sunday Sustainability Fair being held in Portland on February 10. All the pieces we are bringing with us will either be made from mostly recycled and/or reclaimed materials.

Jill and I have learned quite a bit about the extent to which we can push certain types of reclaimed materials while getting ready for this show.

There were several designs that we made it quite far into the process with, only to be abandoned because of limitations and flaws that surfaced due to the types of reclaimed materials we were trying to use. It’s also allowed us to take some mental notes on our processes and eliminate certain types of reclaimed materials because they are simply too hard to work with.

Our newest friend up on our Etsy shop.

A little back story perhaps? Sure:

Percival is extremely fond of techno, dub, trip hop and downtempo music. He’s been known to attend a variety of rave and house style parties, spending days grooving to the hypnotic, repetitive musical structures while hopping around in a semi-trance like state alleviating his cares and concerns.

He’s extremely mellow, widely read and loves to talk about a variety of subjects. Despite being a bit squinty from a variety of strobe light induced corneal burns, Percy is extremely friendly and outgoing.